Marquise Williams Reacts To National Championship

Usually the one on the big screen, Monday night former UNC quarterback Marquise Williams was walking around Franklin Street, just as sullen as the rest of his now former classmates.

“I wanted to cry man,” he said. “Because I don’t get this back. I don’t get to see them go to another national championship again that I was a student, I was a part of. It hurts man but I know they’ll be back sooner or later.”

During their postseason pushes, both the UNC football team and the men’s basketball team took on the motto “we’ve come too far to only come this far,” but while the two teams came close, neither went as far as they hoped.

Williams career ended with a 48-39 loss to Baylor in the Russell Athletic Bowl.

His basketball classmates Marcus Paige, Brice Johnson and Joel James were on the verge of extending their careers by five minutes, before Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beating three pointer that will surely go down as one of the greatest shots in college basketball history.

And while neither group got the storybook ending they hoped for, Williams said nobody could question the impact they made.

“The 2011 class left a legacy,” he said. “A legacy for football and basketball.”

UNC Quarterback Marquise Williams. Photo via Smith Cameron Photography

The days ahead will be rough for a Tar Heel team that was seconds away from taking home a national championship, but Williams said he thinks with hard work, both teams will get to the place they couldn’t quite reach this year.

“You’ve got to get back to work,” he said. “We came up short, but how can we be national champions next year? The football team, we came up short in the bowl game, but how can we be national champions or in the playoffs next year?”

But sometimes even the promise of a bright future can’t ease the pain of today.

“For all the senior class, it sucks,” Williams said. “They got so far to come up so short. Honestly I was walking down the street with (UNC tailback) Charles Brunson and I was like ‘bro, it’s like a feeling that you want to cry.'”

Marquise Williams Reacts To National Championship

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